Text a Mars Bar!

Happy Valentines day one and all. Instead of sending a virtual gift to your mates on Facebook, how about sending a Mars Bar? The Light Agency, working on behalf of Mars Snackfoods, have come up with a Facebook application that lets you do just that.

Here’s how, according to the news release I got this morning, the process works:

Celebrate, an innovative application that allows Facebook users in the UK to send friends real gifts launches on the 14th of February. Celebrate is the first application of its kind to be built on Facebook Platform that will allow the website’s UK users to choose from a range of Mars confectionery gifts from the Celebrate Sweet Shop.

Facebook currently allows users to send friends virtual gifts but the Celebrate application takes this premise further by allowing them to send a real and tangible gift through Celebrate.

The new service is quick and easy to use. Users simply select the gift they wish to send, select a friend, add a message and pay for the gift via tokens on their PayPal account. A message is sent to the gift recipient and they are then requested to provide their mobile number to receive a unique Celebrate Voucher ID and details of the gifts via SMS text to their mobile. To collect the gift, they simply visit a participating PayPoint retailer/stockist and show the Celebrate Voucher ID where it is scanned at the terminal.

Details are sketchy… I have no photos or even a Facebook Application link for you — and the above text reads to me as though the recipient is sent some sort of barcode to their phone. If that’s the case, then this is quite an innovative use of the technology. I’ll try and find out more soon.

UPDATE: Here are some screenshots: